The Bedlam Stacks is about a British man in the 1800s who goes on an expedition to Peru to get quinine. It’s the only cure for malaria and necessary for British settlers in India. In Peru, he meets an indigenous priest named Raphael and visits a holy village called Bedlam. Mysterious occurrences ensue.
This book came highly recommended to me by a friend, and honestly if it wasn’t, I would have dropped it pretty early on. It’s a very slow book, although it picks up around the middle. That’s the part that has a lot of tantalizing details that really enthralled me. I loved the magical realism intertwined with historical fiction. The author did a great job of bringing the setting to life, and I can tell she did a lot of research. I also really liked the character of Raphael- he’s very well written and I liked how details about him were slowly revealed.
The book explores themes of disability, language, colonialism and change vs stability. Some of these were dealt with in a really interesting way- I especially liked the way language was written about. However, I was very disappointed by the theme of colonialism not really having a resolution- I was expecting the book to have a more anti-colonial message but I don’t think it really did. It honestly felt like the book was chill with colonialism. (I would actually really like to be wrong about this, so if you’ve read the book and disagree, let me know.)
I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say I found it incredibly disappointing. I don’t think it resolved any of the themes or character arcs. It made the parts I had liked seem less mysterious and enthralling. It also just felt so incongruous with the rest of the book.
Anyways, I’d probably recommend this book to people who really like historical fiction and don’t mind a slow read. But I don’t think I would recommend it to the majority of people, especially because the ending was so disappointing. I also didn’t realize it was connected to another book, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, until the end. If you’ve read this let me know if you think I’d like it, as I’m not opposed to reading another book by the same author. (Mainly I’d like to know if it has a good ending)
by moss42069